Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Why We Do the Things We Do

Why We Do the Things We Do

Since my teen years I have known that, to a large extent, we humans are passengers in our own bodies - that many if not most decisions we make are made on a level that we are not even aware of. The effect of the subconscious, the sense menory, and the eerie way that smell can catapult one back in time in an instant are all evidence of this. The autopilot function that allows us to walk and talk without ever thinking about our legs or our tongues is the clearest indication of this. Now U.S. News and World report has an article that sums up the state of our knowledge of that magnificent machine that is behind all of this. It

reveals an aspect of a rich inner life that is not a part of conscious, much less rational, thought. Today, long after Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the fact that much of what we do is determined by mysterious memories and emotional forces, the depths of the mind and the brain are being explored anew. "Most of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious, " says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan. "Life would be chaos if everything were on the forefront of our consciousness."

Fueled by powerful neuroimaging technology, questions about how we make snap decisions, why we feel uncomfortable without any obvious causes, what motivates us, and what satisfies us are being answered not through lying on a couch and exploring individual childhood miseries but by looking at neurons firing in particular parts of our brains. Hardly a week passes without the release of the results of a new study on these kinds of processes. And popular culture is so fascinated by neuroscience that Blink, journalist Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of "thinking without thinking," has remained on the bestseller lists for four weeks.

Goes rather well with last Friday's post, don't you think? Keep reading....